Tuesday, February 25, 2014

He's been outside my body longer than he was in. And it was rough in. But we are all on the mend. And Jacob is perfectly healthy...and yet, I still don't feel as strong as I was a year ago. It gets me thinking about the impact on me. My sister and I were talking about a friend's traumatic birth story and how this story correlated having a traumatic birth with PTSD. It had never occurred to me. Chris's was. But I don't think that I got PTSD from it, and from everything that happened after. It was rough, I won't lie, but we were very blessed that we had family close to help out, and visit, and we had been off for the holidays, and we could just Be with Chris as he needed us. Sure having emergency surgery and being in the NICU isn't what we expected for our first born baby, but we just rolled with it. It didn't gang up on us until Christmas, and we prayed and prayed and got through it. Things turned around then, and we had each other. But we'd been flexible about the birth. I wanted to go natural, but my body just wasn't going to comply. I was ok with that. I'd had about 10 years experience of my body not doing what I wanted with my back. 4 years on the uterus alone. I think it's a problem with women today getting locked into a birth plan. They want their perfect vision of candles and bathtubs, beautiful music, and bringing the baby into the world THEIR way. It doesn't always happen like that. I don't know anyone that actually had a successful birth like that. I'm sure they exist, I just don't know them. I think it's Vital that women are prepared, that they are knowledgeable about all the things that can be happen during a birth. Jacob's birth was actually the easiest of all of mine. He was a scheduled c-section. With both Chris and Sam I labored a bit first. Chris's was worst, as it was 24 hours of induction and labor before the c-section. And Sam I only labored for a few hours. With Jacob, it had just been such a rough pregnancy that I was relieved when it was over. And thankful I could breathe again. And that my blood pressure wasn't so bad. I so desperately want to be fully recovered. Now spring is coming, he's been on the outside more than the in, I feel like I can move forward too. Time to go for a walk.